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Which platform?

Hello forum!

There is such a wealth of ecommerse solutions out there that I don't know where to look and which one to pick. I hope you can all shine some light in the forest!

I'm looking for an ecommerse solution that can handle:
- several member levels, whith each member level having a different price for the same product
- interface and product info to be presented according to the language of the customer
- customer store credit & vouchers
- spot market offers, limited in time and in stock availability
- to show customer product rating, text experiences, Facebook likes and twitter buttons
- credit card payments in euro
- invoicing, vat & company accounting

All this for about 1500 customers, growing steadily.

I'm sure plenty of hosted solutions exist that would offer these functionalities, but, which ones? Are there any that are particularly recommendable? Located in Europe?

What cost would one need to consider? I've heard anything from 100K designs to less then 100 a month subscriptions. Surely these differ in a way I can't grasp.

Have you tried looking at OpenCart? They are a free open-source ecommerce platform and I think they cover all of your points. Another one would be PrestaShop.

Now if you are looking for a hosted shopping cart that you need to pay a monthly fee, I would strongly recommend BigCommerce or Shopify. However, they might not cover all of the points you mentioned.

Hope this helps bro!

Thanks for the feedback!

We would be going for a hosted solution as we don't have the technical skills to manage security and updates etc. But we are having trouble finding a solution that can handle all our points.

Are there any big/reputable companies offering the service of setting up, managing security and updates? I'm not talking fantastico stuff, or small IT companies, but bigger players who have the customer base to be real experts on security.

If you have big company and large number of customers then I suggest to choose sitefinity. As per your requirements and security purpose, Sitefinity is best platform to build secure ecommerce website. You can hire sitefinity developer if you have no technical knowledge.

If you are looking for a hosted solution, I would recommend BigCommerce or Shopify. The reason I would recommend these solutions is because they have hundreds of apps that integrate with them to allow you to sell more and get more traffic. However, some of your requirements may not be met, however, I would suggest you give them a call and talk to them.

As an option, you can buy a one-time purchase e-commerce platform and find a dedicated programmer who will technically support your online store and add new features if necessary. Generally, you won't spend more money than on a hosted solution and the biggest plus is that this platform will be yours forever and once you satisfied with the functionality, you don't need a technical support any more, you can just sell your products and don't pay any monthly fee. CS-Cart system covers your requirements. The new CS-Cart version will be released soon, check it.

There are actually quite a few great solutions out there that'll help you find what you need!

BigCommerce and Shopify have been mentioned here -- these are both great options in terms of hosted shopping carts that will give you a relatively easy out-of-the-box eCommerce setup.;

Volusion and Magento are two of the biggest free carts around.

The Community Edition of Magento is completely free and open source. This is good and bad.

It's good, because free. Free is good!

It's bad, depending on your level of technical experience and expertise. Since it's totally open-source, there's a huge community of licensed developers and folks who can help you get your store functioning exactly the way you want it to. It can get pretty technically involved, though.

Volusion is another option that'll help you out -- it's a bit less developer-oriented. You might want to find a designer who can help you with your Volusion store, but in either case it sounds like a bit of outside help might be in the cards when it comes to getting your shopping cart set up and organized just the way you want it to be.

Hope this helps! You're more than welcome to PM me with any questions.

Magento eCommerce is a leading open source platform in the market today and it is trusted by worldwide many great companies. It has various types of modules, extensions and features, which makes the website anything possible. If you are looking for the completely customized eCommerce store, then Magento is the best choice.

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I think Magento can meet all your requirements. You can customize with advanced features to help you build full shopping feature online store.
For examples,
- Social login Extension: Your customer can log in quickly to make a purchase, check out, rate product, like your store via Facebook & Twitter.
- You can integrate variety of popular payment Gateways (PayPal, American Express, Cash on Delivery (COD), Bank Transfer, JCB, Skrill,...) So it's suitable for European market
- PDF Invoice Plus, Web POS, Retailer POS: These extensions can help you manage invoices, vat & company accounting
And many more... So in my opinion, Magento is the best choice for you =))

In my opinion Magento is one of the best & noticeable CMS for developing an eCommerce Website. Magento is essentially an open source PHP and MySQL based features enriched platform. Lots of templates available and easy to modify. Several easy to use plugins available. From the conversion rate optimization point of view can be customized as per testing results and many more.

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